I think I read an article saying that one of the top Chinese officials with enormous power had been in the US and although initially supposedly open to western ideas had found a lot of negatives that ended up reinforcing more opposing beliefs.

You might be thinking of Wang Huning's "America Against America" (1991). Scott Alexander's June 2023 blog post on the subject hit the front page of HN last month. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/assistant-dictator-book-clu... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Huning https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39051100